


Two Silver Pistols, and Holy Writ

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Demons, M/M, Other, Psychic Battle, Psychic Hatesex, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:27:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28499790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Javert visits Montreuil-sur-Mer on All Soul’s Eve to capture a demon in disguise.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: Valvert Monster Remix





	Two Silver Pistols, and Holy Writ

Since prehistoric times, the old village of Montreuil-sur-Mer stood on the hillside overlooking the hungry mouth of the river Canche, on the border of light and darkness. In the summer, the village was marked by long, sun-drenched mornings and Sundays filled with glad calls to prayer. Its reinforced upper town and Gothic cathedral seemed so close to Paradise that one could almost hear the sound of ineffable wings as angels went about their heavenly errands. 

But in the winter, the days were overcast, and storm-wrecked, and sullen. Church services were brief, with parishioners hurrying to return home before nightfall. Mothers kept their children indoors for fear that they would be carried off by monsters which lurked around every corner. The smell of brimstone rose from the cobblestones of the lower town — and, in the upper town, the air was beset by the unsettling sound of very different wings.

The town had several rituals to hold back the coming darkness, rituals tried and tested throughout the ages. They celebrated La Chandeleur, the presentation of Christ by the Blessed Virgin, that marked the coming of spring and the overcoming of evil by the light. Saint-Sylvestre, on the cusp between the old year and the new, was scrupulously observed, as were Le Réveillon and the feast day of Saint Nicolas. As the dark days approached from the other side, the town commemorated La Toussaint, and the night before that, All Souls Eve, when demons and unquiet spirits were permitted to freely roam the earth.

In the shortening days of October leading up to All Soul’s, the villagers nailed horseshoes above their front doors and strung wolfsbane and nightshade around their windows. In the evenings, they left basins filled with water at their door as a guard against unwary demons, who would be trapped there when the water turned overnight into ice. 

And at night the villagers gathered at the mairie to partake of a simple communal supper, warding off hunger and loneliness to stand in the light together.

This last ritual against the darkness had been put into place by the town’s new mayor, Madeleine, who had taken office in the preceding year. Greying and robust, the saintly industrialist was seen every day in the pews of the Eglise Saint-Saulve; his jet factory employed a goodly proportion of the populace; he had endowed a hospital and a school for the needy in the lower part of the village. It seemed he would suffer no orphan or widow to starve within the town’s borders, nor the powers of darkness to hold sway. He was universally revered, and universally loved, and none more so because of his care for the bodies as well as souls of the citizens of Montreuil.

As the other evenings of this dread month, the night of All Soul’s Eve loomed dark and grim, beset by strange odours and unsettling storms. The townsfolk gathered at the mairie, where the brightness of lanterns warded off the night outside. Fires had been lit, including the one in the ancient fireplace in the great hall, platters of bread and cheese and cured meat were laid on the long table, and wine and conversation flowed as freely as permitted under the eye of the parish priest. As the hours passed, the camaraderie within seemed almost proof against the howling wind outside.

When the clock struck the ninth hour — the number of the many-horned the beast as given in the book of Revelations, the penultimate chapter of the Holy Writ — the door to the mairie banged open, and into this warm and well-lit place strode one man.

He was of medium stature, clad in an iron-grey frock-coat, armed with a heavy cane and iron shackles and two silver pistols, and wearing a tall, battered hat. His grave, striking face arrested the spectator's attention, even when he had not yet arrested any one.

His name was Javert, and he belonged to the Inquisition.

The Inquisition was that branch of the Church which combated the forces of darkness. It fielded warriors against the monsters and demon-spawn that walked the Lord’s good earth in winter. Armed with silver and holy water as well as Holy Writ, its officers were given free rein to arrest those beasts who wore mortal faces, beings whose natures belied their inhuman, animalistic instincts, to capture those half-demons — the man-wolf, the man-fox, the man-lion — to place them in irons, and bring them before the Church’s summary justice. 

The villagers of Montreuil were God-fearing folk, but they could not help but recoil from the presence of this upright, menacing, fearsome man. Their bright chatter died on their lips, and they fell silent as he strode past them, his boot heels ringing out on the polished floor of the hall.

Like an arrow in flight, Inquisitor Javert crossed the room and approached the high table, as if he was aiming himself at the throat of the man who was seated there.

Mayor Madeleine rose to his feet to meet the assault. He was taller and broader than the Inquisitor; he held his large, robust body awkwardly, as if unused to, or untrusting of, the leashed power within it. 

“Good evening, Monsieur l’Inquisiteur. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”

Javert smiled slowly. “Monsieur le Maire. Are you so sure my presence here is pleasurable?”

“Of course,” Madeleine said, in tones that nevertheless seemed to convey nothing of the kind. “It’s just surprising, that is all. You have lived amongst us for some months now, and this is the first time you have seen fit to join any of our social gatherings.”

Javert said, deceptively mildly, across the table that separated them, “The Inquisition’s purposes here are not sociable, nor are they pleasurable. I am here on the Lord’s business.”

There was a collective intake of breath around them. Madeleine said, sharply, “The business of hunting down demon-spawn? Why would that have brought you here, of all places?”

“You might have wondered that. Wondered: why is Inquisitor Javert not abroad in the streets on this night, shining Heaven’s unfailing light into those spaces beneath the stones through which the fumes of Hell can be scented, between the trees where demons are lurking, or in the cemeteries where walk the unquiet dead.” Javert smiled with casual menace, “I wondered it myself. But then I have smelled brimstone in the hallowed halls of this mairie, and in the scarf which rests upon the shoulders of its mayor, and it is for this reason that I have come here to this place instead.”

Again, there was a horrified gasp; Javert’s nostrils flared, as if indeed breathing in the odour of demonic brimstone to which he had just referred. His eyes beheld the mayor coldly, as one might behold not a well-dressed man in the prime of life, but a creature made of fire and darkness, hiding infernal wings beneath a comely human form.

The mayor’s wide, generous mouth quivered as he said, “Is that so? What reason would there possibly be for you to sense such a thing in such a place as this?”

Javert chuckled. “What reason, do you say? Come now. I cannot believe you would pretend not to know.”

Madeleine met his gaze with equanimity. “Why don’t you tell me? After all, this is your realm of expertise, Inquisitor.”

“It is, it is.” Javert began to pace in front of the table, hands clasped behind his back, in a not-inconspicuous circling of his prey. As he walked, he said, “As you might know, I was myself born amongst the half-breeds, criminals so wicked as to be barely human. In my youth I served in the Inquisition’s great prison of Toulon, standing guard over the demon-spawn imprisoned there.”

He passed the length of the table, and then crossed to the other side, coming to stand barely inches away from the mayor. Quietly, he continued, almost too softly for the crowd to hear: “I learned the demons’ ways: the smell of their fiery blood, the dark wings that, if uncrippled, would blot out the sun. Their burning sex that would scorch a woman’s mortal flesh, or a man’s. They would keep these things hidden between their shoulders, between their legs, under their red smocks, but I would always know they were there.”

The Inquisitor paused to deliberately rake his eyes up and down Madeleine’s form; his regard lingered on the broad shoulders, the meaty thighs, on what might be hidden between those thighs. Then once again he met the mayor’s gaze. “When I left Toulon, I joined the ranks of the Inquisition, and have dedicated my life to ferreting out these unclean beasts who have concealed themselves in decent society.” 

Madeleine cleared his throat. “And you feel that one of these beasts has hidden himself here?”

“Oh, I know it. And not just any beast. Most demon-spawn who have served their time in prison are shackled things, emasculated and sexless, constrained by the Law from harming or consuming any one. They would never approach with their inhuman desires any decent woman, nor man, either. No, I can smell a rigorous, full-blooded beast, proud and untamed, hiding in plain sight — taunting us all with his foul hungers and even fouler lusts.”

A murmur of protest ran through the crowd. The mayor had to swallow. “If you suspect such a beast is here, why do you not take action?”

“Again, you might ask that. My authority allows me to denounce any one who might be a demon in disguise. I could commission an inquiry that would allow me to perform a more intimate search. The Law would allow me to lay hands on the person in question and to tear the shirt off their back, to open their trousers. There would be evidence: crippled wings, or scars across shoulder-blades from where they were severed; there would be the brand that the Inquisition had left on its chest.”

Javert took one step closer. His voice was full of undisguised menace when he said, “And then there would be the cloven feet, the blood that would drip fire, the foul nether regions that no decent man would have. If I was given the authority, I would do it. I would.”

“You could do it, to any one here in Montreuil, save for one,” Madeleine agreed, quietly. 

He did not say who it was. He did not have to. The Church’s emergency powers did not extend to representatives of the state, as provided for in legislation established during the abolition of the Ancien Régime. Javert would have needed to submit a writ to the Inquisition’s High Command, and he would not have denounced a civilian mayor without greater proof than the smell of brimstone and a gleam in the man’s eye.

Javert’s lips parted in a snarl of rage; he reached almost convulsively towards his silver pistols. The mayor took a step back as the horrified crowd fell silent. 

A tremendous gust of wind swept through the hall, snuffing out half the lanterns and candlesticks and casting the great room into shadow. The red light from the crackling, spitting fireplace turned the human figures of the mayor and the Inquisitor into misshapen, fantastical half-beastly icons of themselves.

In that eerie half-light, it was all too easy to imagine Javert putting his will and powerful Inquisitor’s insight against the mayor’s untrained one. More: as the sweat stood out on Madeleine’s brow and as Javert bared his teeth, the terrified onlookers could almost see the avatars of both men spring at each other’s throats. Roaring in determination and defiance, these titans grappled with each other in the murky gloom overhead. Clothed with Holy Writ and righteousness, Javert obtained an early upper hand, feinting under the mayor’s guard to drive him to his knees, and, with a quick motion, he fastened the shackles around Madeleine’s left wrist, bending him to the iron will of the Law. 

As Madeleine cried out, Javert seized hold of the fine clothes and mayor’s sash and ripped them all away, and that glistening, inhuman body was forced to give up its secrets.

There it was, the evidence that had been foretold. The brand upon beast’s broad chest, the half-healed wounds on its back that oozed fire. And between the muscle-corded thighs was a monstrous, jutting weapon made of flame.

Despite himself, the Inquisitor hesitated, and he was immediately lost. Madeleine broke free of the iron and of Javert’s mental grasp, and rose up, his powerful form majestic in its nakedness. From his shoulders sprang massive wings — not the obscene, crippled things of darkness to which the Inquisitor had alluded, but white-feathered wings, shining brighter than the All Soul’s moon itself.

This terrible, beautiful man-creature seized the Inquisitor by the neck, and flung him to the ground, and fell upon him. 

A deafening clap of thunder rang out from outside, and the room was plunged into darkness.

Amid cries of fear and alarm, the mairie’s servants hurried in with more candles, and set about lighting the hall once again. As the room was rescued from the brink of darkness, as illumination gradually returned, the people could make out two figures on either side of the table, standing inches apart: once again fully dressed and seemingly once again fully human. 

It was as if their battle royale had never occurred, or at least as if their combat, such as it was, had for now been fully spent. Perspiration poured off them, they were trembling in every limb, their bodies heaving with fast breath, and yet they lingered, facing off against each other, unable to tear their eyes from the other.

Finally the mayor spoke, sounding bone-weary, as if mortality was itself exhausting. 

“Will you do it, Monsieur? Will you act on the Lord’s business, and do what you came here to do?”

The Inquisitor hesitated, and he was not at all by nature a hesitant man. It was as if a veritable bestial instinct had overcome the pure and upright motives of his office, an instinct stoked by the vile lusts of the demon-spawn being harboured under Madeleine’s mayoral garb, or by the strange angelic being which lived alongside it. The remnants of his heated contest with the mayor, as well as another kind of heat, could be seen in his clouded eyes. 

“No,” he said at last. “The Inquisition will stay its hand. For now.”

He bowed to the mayor like a challenge, and then turned on his heel and departed from the mairie into the darkness. It was as though the howling night had prevailed, and had swallowed him whole, silver and all.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 2021!
> 
> [This monster](https://cdn.discordapp.com/halloween-bot/Demon.png).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sweet Hellfire, Burn Away My Sins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29265963) by [breadthief (trufield)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufield/pseuds/breadthief)




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